Jesica Torres

Economist, Office of the Chief Economist for the Middle East and North Africa, World Bank

Jesica Torres is an economist in the Office of the Chief Economist for the Middle East and North Africa of the World Bank. Her analytical work has focused on understanding how special provisions such as size-dependent regulations, simplified tax regimes, or preferential labor regulations distort both the selection into entrepreneurship and the behavior of firms, and how that ultimately affects the allocation of resources in the economy. More recently, she has studied the determinants of the entry of high-growth firms and has led or co-authored numerous reports analyzing the effect of the pandemic on the private sector using the COVID-19 Business Pulse Surveys. Before joining the World Bank in 2019, she worked as a Visiting Scholar in the Inter-American Development Bank, as an economic advisor in the Mexican federal government, and as a research-professor at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico. She received her PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago.